


preacher's knot

by cherubique



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, SI-5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:18:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22140160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherubique/pseuds/cherubique
Summary: Alana Maxwell has some qualms with the way Kepler ties his Eldridge Windsor knots, and he's bemused by her in her entirety: computer scientist with a teddy-bear in place of a rubber duck, mathematical prodigy who wrings her own scruff when the odds are out of her favour, and bright eyed secret agent who looks at him like he's everything.
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi & Alana Maxwell, Daniel Jacobi & Warren Kepler & Alana Maxwell, Warren Kepler & Alana Maxwell
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	preacher's knot

“You’ve tied that wrong,” Maxwell says, her feet swinging lightly as she stares at him from the bed. She has a face for glasses, Kepler thinks to himself- the round chubbiness of her cheeks like a child’s, the washed out facial features, mild and even tempered: she could do with the definition. But she doesn’t have a prescription, as Jacobi and her have agreed on for their questions and answers of ‘how would you prove it’s actually me and not an evil clone?’ No glasses, no contact lenses. Instead, her bright blue eyes blink out at him- the dyed dark hair harsh against them in contrast. It makes her look a little more like him- more passably a father-daughter pair for the evening debutante dance they’re infiltrating. Terribly sallows her out, though. 

“What are you talking about?” Kepler asks, and he tries to keep the bite out of his voice at the last minute- softening it with a wry smile, hand raking through his own dark hair. There’s a touch of white and gray at the temples, a severity in the eleven lines just beginning to show up between his eyebrows. They’ve never really bothered him before. At least not when he’s with Jacobi- more comfortable around the _yes, sir_ and _Jacobi, as you were_ professionalism bludgeoned into him by a brief stint in the academy. 

With Alana, though- she seems younger, a little quirkier: an on the up and up bright eyed, bushy tailed scientist like so many haunting Silicon Valley. She wears patterned socks, and then _shows_ them to him, hopping up and down on one foot as she yanks up her black slacks with a shit eating grin on her face. Her drinks are cartoonishly sweet and caffeinated. She’d offered him a sip once, from a metal straw- and he’d grimaced immediately at the onslaught of sugar, Alana tipping her head back and laughing loudly. She’s radically opinionated- but it doesn’t help much, making her seem even more like a passionate girl too young to know what she stands for, flitting from cause to cause like a butterfly. It highlights his own age, his own experience. His own solidity in ranking at Goddard. Expresso, neat. He’s standing in front of the hotel mirror, impersonal as ever: a slab of his own reflection, dressed to the nines and empty, somehow. It must be the lack of military uniform that’s throwing him off.

“Your eldridge windsor knot. You’re going to look like a jackass, sir,” she chirps, voice insolently bright, as she walks over to him, legs eating up the distance in sloping strides, like a puppy dog playing at being a wolf. She’s been practicing copying Jacobi’s loping steps- the two of them inseparable. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought they were siblings. “It’s one thing to wear that obnoxious of a tie, and another entirely to get it wrong. Here,” she says, leaning in- suddenly swallowing up his personal space, hands going for the length of silk. She digs her thumbs into the knot, undoes it as easily as a magician unfurling handkerchiefs hidden up their sleeves. 

“I don’t believe that I gave you permission to do that, Maxwell,” and she looks up at him- and sticks her tongue out. He could almost laugh with how taken aback he is, and her eyes sparkle, clearly picking up on the amusement crinkling the corner of his mouth- tugged halfway up into a near smile, but not quite.

“I’m doing you a favour, sir, trust me on this one-” and she winds the tie back around again, fingers as deft as when they’re click-clacking over weathered keyboards, flashing neon colours sparkling underneath her touch as she cobbles together patches for broken code and rubs shoulders with Douglas in the communications station. The knot is perfect, and she smiles, self satisfied. “There, see?” she asks, stepping back so he can look at it in the mirror. To give credit where it’s due: it is immaculately done. 

“Thank you. Next time, ask first,” he says, and Alana laughs, rolling her eyes. 

“No need to get paternalistic, sir, even though- I appreciate the dedication to the role you’re to play, tonight,” she says, and then she’s moving over, darting to take a hold of his hand, momentarily. She squeezes it like she’s crushing an insect- before dropping it like a hot potato. He thinks it might be her way of trying to show affection- Alana barely tolerates touch, skirting shyly away from handshakes at conferences and hands on her shoulder to _please hand over that stapler, could you?_ and offered cups of coffee, fingers pulled away from a stranger’s. Jacobi is the only exception- the two joined at the hip, his arm always thrown over her shoulders, bringing her in close to kiss her gently on the forehead, pulling away a little so they’re face to face, like little pups in a pack playing. Kepler smirks at the thought.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” he asks, and watches with dispassionate closeness as she squirms for a moment underneath the line of questioning. She has a number of obvious verbal tells: the hand touching the back of her neck, fingers digging into freckled skin, earlobe pulled on, worried between her index and thumb as she picks her way through a particularly tangled piece of coding, the wrung wrists and wiggled fingers when she’s excitedly explaining her newest breakthrough in a project to Jacobi and a little teddy bear he bought her in place of the yellow rubber duck that Kepler had previously set aside part of Special Intelligence’s budget for, seeing as how many of the squirrel brained bastards among the engineering cohort liked to park them on their desks to problem solve with. If it helped with productivity, he justified to himself once- index finger toying with the frilled edge of the frayed orange ribbon from one of Jacobi’s jackets that he’d given Alana, wrapped securely around the bear’s neck like a garrotte. 

The bear had replaced the rubber duck of course- after the duck had been launched through the nearby window and bonked him in the side of the head. 

He’d stormed over to find a hysterically distraught Jacobi and Maxwell agitatedly grabbing the back of her own neck like she wanted to hang herself by the scruff, trying desperately to calm him down. The door slammed shut behind him, rattling in its frame. Her voice had been pitchy and wavering, breaking in absolute relief when she noticed him coming over. There had been momentary fear in response to the anger written across his face- paling to an raw belief, that he’d be able to fix what she couldn’t. 

It’d given him pause, for a moment, how vividly her emotions were telegraphed across her face, so often buried in the pallid blue light of her computer screen, rubbing at her eyes tiredly after staring for hours to debug. Maybe that was why she tried to keep away from people. Looking at her was like reading an open book- Alana couldn’t lie to save her life, her face would give it away. 

After saving the day- a cold pack snapped over his knee, a wet towel to smooth over Jacobi’s brow, exaggerated breathing exercises pulled in through the nose and out the mouth: he’d made a few mental notes. 

_Phobia of ducks. Violent startle response._

_Holds the back of her neck to self soothe. A looking glass face._

_Incompetent without each other._

“My father was a preacher. He used to wear it, every Sunday service. You pick up on these things,” she grumbles out eventually, words mumbled and blurry beneath her breath. Normally, he’d reprimand her for speaking like she’d a mouth full of cotton. Ask her to repeat herself, and watch distantly as frustration sparked at the corner of her mouth, the balling of her fists held down by her sides, voice slow and measured as she restarted, picking up old threads of thought. Instead, Kepler blinks his slate chip eyes, and only smiles at her- Alana enraptured by the change in expression that she was clearly never anticipating, perking up visibly at the approval.

“Well, then. It’s a good thing we’ve you around,” he says, somehow making the words not sound sarcastic- not that he thinks Alana would have noticed regardless, given the way she looks at him: like he is the sun. His hand comes down on her shoulder- and she flinches, momentarily. He lifts it off without being asked, still keeping careful tabs on the flickers of emotion running across her face: discomfort, relief, gratitude. 

When he invites her to head downstairs to the main event, the reason the bathroom sink has traces of blue tinged black dye in its basin and Alana had tilted her head back into his hands, cradling her head in the cup of them: intensely aware he could break her neck with the slightest effort, massaging in dye to her roots- she nods enthusiastically, and settles into step close beside him. She doesn’t suspect a thing. 

His smile lingers. He’s not unusually intelligent- quick witted, sharp, sure- but he’s surrounded by some of the brightest minds this nation has to offer on a regular basis. Having to work with the sort of people who play God casually with artificial life or chart the trajectories of rockets lightyears away down to the millimetre has a habit of throwing into sharp relief what really makes up _genius._ No, what he does have is a keen emotional intelligence, at picking up exactly what people need and spinning it around to offer to them, open palmed and warmly smiling. The real trick is in making them believe it was all spontaneously conjured out of thin air: a mutual understanding borne of empathy and tenderness. Of being _understood._

Maxwell and Jacobi make it too easy to lie to them, sometimes.


End file.
